Slow Process
by Ghanaperu
Summary: "It didn't happen overnight, you know. I never decided to grow up, just like I never decided to be born. It just happened. And if I had known what I was choosing, maybe I would have made different decisions. And maybe not." Susan attempts to explain her reasoning - set after Prince Caspian and before the Last Battle.


It was a slow process, you know. I didn't just wake up one morning and decide that Aslan and Narnia were all a fairy tale. No, I hoped. When we came out of the wardrobe, I held onto the hope of going back someday, someday soon. For a whole year I clung desperately to that hope; and then it happened. We went back. But it wasn't the same, not at all. We had become ancient history, and the Golden Age of our rule was well and truly over.

So I was sad, we were all sad, but I knew I could learn to live in the new Narnia. I could learn to love it just as much as the old, if I had half a chance. But no, I wasn't to be given that chance. Just as it started to seem like we belonged here again, Aslan sent us away. And he didn't just send us away for a while, either. He told both me and Peter that we would never be coming back. Do you know how long never is? Never is eternity, because it is farther away than even hope can reach.

Without hope I had nothing. Back in the land we were supposed to call home, I had nothing left to keep me going - nothing except a lot of empty memories and the devastatingly familiar feeling of forgetting details. We all forgot together though, and we worked hard to remind the others of what was important. At least, for a while we all did.

I said it was a slow fade, and it was; but it was also instantaneous. One day, in a single moment, I realized that there would come a time when I could no longer remember even the important things. No matter how hard we tried, the memories were going to slip steadily away - and I was terrified. If my memories were lost then I would truly have nothing.

So I started to pretend, just a little bit, that Aslan and Narnia didn't mean quite so much as we all said. I pretended that there was more to life than the past; I pretended that I had a bright future ahead of me. And it's hard to pretend for any length of time without believing it, at least a little. And I began to see all the other people in our world, who were living their lives just fine without ever knowing Aslan; and I asked myself these questions: "Why should I care about Narnia when I will never go back? Why should I keep loving Aslan when he has already rejected me?"

I found no answers, not even from the boy who was once the Just King. He tried, all of them tried, to answer them for me. Or maybe they were just answering them for themselves, I don't know. But either way, we found no answers. So Lucy left the search behind and found solace in faith, the never-ending faith that Aslan was good and everything he did was good. I wanted to believe that, but I just couldn't. I couldn't.

Peter fought his way through the world, choosing to act as if Narnia and England were one and the same. I know that I am thought of as the traitor, but he and I were not so different in our responses, really. He lost his crown the same as I did, only he threw his away and then went searching for it; while I set mine down and never looked back. But he had no answers for himself, and nothing that I could imitate to lead me along the right path.

Edmund somehow managed the best of all of us. Maybe it had something to do with the knowledge that comes from the forgiveness of betrayal; but I wouldn't know because I never had to be forgiven for that. I asked him, once, why he wasn't angry, and he couldn't answer. He asked a question, instead. "Who am I to know the will of Aslan?" he asked, and I envied him for his ability to so easily accept the burden that weighed so heavily on me.

So I was unable to follow the path of anyone else. I had to find my own answers to my own questions, and I did. The answer I found was the future, and endless years of shallow life. If I stayed shallow, then I never had to find a real answer to the deep questions within my heart. And it was somewhere in those long years of shallowness that Aslan ceased to be real to me. Somewhere along the way, I stopped believing in Narnia and Aslan and dreams that really do come true. I forgot the important things, just like I was afraid of.

But they weren't important then, so my world didn't fall apart. I didn't even notice, until the day when Lucy called to tell me about the song she had heard that reminded her of a certain dance we had learned together. I was shocked, in that moment, with the knowledge that everyone was not on the same journey that I was. Somehow it seemed as if all of them should also consider Narnia to be a fairy tale, and I was surprised by the reminder that I had gotten to this place alone. It slipped out before I thought - a little snort of disbelief. Lucy stopped talking immediately, and it was then that both she and I realized that I had left the others behind somewhere along the way. She hung up, suddenly, and I was left holding the disconnected phone with a strange feeling of regret.

Edmund called the next day, and I knew that everything had changed as soon as I picked up the phone. "Hello Susan," he said tentatively, as if I was a stranger. I frowned at the wall next to the phone, and responded just like I was the same sister he had always known. He didn't bring up Narnia at all, and neither did I; but the simple implications of that hung heavy in the silences. After he hung up, I put on my coat and went to the park and walked around amongst the trees. They were silent, just like always. Trees don't talk, you know. It is a commonly known fact.

After that I sat on a bench and breathed the crisp air all by myself, and wondered when it was that I became alone. I wondered which moment it was that I decided I couldn't keep holding on to Narnia, and believing in the foolish hopes of childhood. I wondered what it would be like to live from that moment on, knowing that I had chosen something that none of my siblings would follow me on.

But it was cold and so I didn't wonder for very long. I went home and made myself hot chocolate, and then I took the wooden lion that Lucy had given me last Christmas and looked at it for a long while. I talked to it, and I felt stupid and lost and crazy. I told it sorry, but it didn't reply. And after a long while, I looked at its stiff mane and frozen limbs one last time and then I put it in the trash can and closed the lid.

It didn't happen overnight, you know. I never decided to grow up, just like I never decided to be born. It just happened. And if I had known what I was choosing, maybe I would have made different decisions. And maybe not. But I'll never know, and it doesn't really make a difference because there is no going back now. I've apologized to all the wooden lions I ever will, told them all the words I wish I could have told to the others.

Maybe someday they will understand how it was that I left them behind.


End file.
